It just may be here: My favorite season of the year.
Serious melting has begun and it's time for sloshing through ice-laced puddles.
For me, Spring in Smalltown is a great joy. To go from the cold white to a multitude of colors--some breaking through before your very eyes--is a wonder I never experienced when living in the Golden State. I love the flowers, the greening of the grass, the warm air, and even the violent thunderstorms. Bring it on!
Mary Jo Salter's "Spring Thaw in Hadley" portrays the miraculous chaos of this time of great beauty. Here are a few lines from the poem:
By noon, the ice as thin
as an eggshell veined to show
life seeping yellow,
one’s boots sink in
with a snap; the sap
underrunning everything
may be nothing but water, yet
there’s a sacramental
joy in how, converting
to its liquid state,
it’s anything but gentle.
...you can read the poem in its entirety here at PoetryFoundation.org.
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Jama Rattigan is on the round up and asks you to share your favorite Bob Dylan lyric if you'd like. (Oops! Time to improvise...)
I'll share some lyrics from a Bob Dylan song I like very much, but don't really understand at all: "One More Cup of Coffee for the Road." This song just speaks to me, I wonder why?
Your sister sees the future
Like your mama and yourself.
You've never learned to read or write
There's no books upon your shelf.
And your pleasure knows no limits
Your voice is like a meadowlark
But your heart is like an ocean
Mysterious and dark.
One more cup of coffee for the road,
One more cup of coffee 'fore I go
To the valley below.
You can read the whole song here.
(I have no idea what this song means, but I like it anyway. The rest of the lyrics are even more opaque.)
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Photos from FreeFoto.com
10 Comments on Poetry Friday: Spring?, last added: 3/18/2008
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The Salter poem is so lovely, Kelly, and the Dylan lyric is one I wasn't familiar with -- so I'm thrilled you shared it!
Thanks for including that Dylan lyric. I'm glad there's someone else can really like things they don't necessarily understand!
Oh, my gosh -- has real melting begun? You've SEEN it? Eyewitness accounts!?!?
There is ...well, I was going to say, "a God," but I'll just say: HOPE.
Whew.
I fully expect it to stop hailing here, THIS INSTANT, because it's melting in Smalltown. I mean it now. Make it stop.
Jama: It's a good Dylan song. You should listen to it. There's audio at the link.
Writer2b: I rarely understand Dylan's lyrics. I honestly don't think we're meant to and I'm not sure that's because he's deep :)
Tadmack: I'm waving my wand frantically hoping the hail to stop NOW.
I am loving Spring too. The energy just zooms me. That's a great poem. It is a "sacramental
joy" how everything bursts open in colors.
The Dylan song was one of my favorites in college, right along with The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock. :) It made sense in the middle of the night when we were eating huge cinnamon buns at the coffee shop.
Me too, clouds...me too. I'm a new woman.
I'm glad you know this song. It does work well with midnight raids :)
mmm-mmm, the sap underrunning everything. Mmmm-mmmm.
The most amazing thing to me about the spring melt and spring rains is that you can actually *hear* the earth drinking in all that water! That sucking, bubbling, gurgling sound coming from a lawn or field is astonishing. If I listened more closely, could I hear the sap in the trees, I wonder?
That Salter poem is glorious. Thanks for sharing it!
We have fresh snow yesterday and today. It's white and gorgeous out! But we were thinking spring this time last week, I'll admit.
I love this:
the self-
invented digits of
icicles addressed
(in a manner reminiscent
of the insubstantial
finger of a sundial)
less to a point in space
than effectively to Time,
the frozen moment.
Fantastic--thanks for sharing.